


The Edge of Reason

by NadaNine



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3802120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NadaNine/pseuds/NadaNine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Aizen leads a peaceful existence. He teaches his classes. He practices his calligraphy. He lives alone and unknown, a quiet existence of mediocrity, until the day his apartment becomes inexplicably haunted, and the creeping madness of his past begins to eat away at his hard-won sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flower on the Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a canon-divergence rather than an AU. Before canon went and answered the question of what would happen to Aizen, this is how I thought Urahara might solve the dual problem of what to do with Aizen and the Hougyoku.

The calm monotony of his morning routine was a soothing activity, not to be underestimated. Aizen took a simple pleasure in the motions of preparing breakfast, putting together a pot of tea, retrieving the paper from outside his apartment door and spreading it across the small table, dusty ink smearing on his fingers. If he listened, he could hear the faint rousings of the family next door, a child squalling at the dawning light. Outside, the morning snarl of traffic was already heating up, motors grumbling petulantly about the Monday commute, horns blaring in brief stabs of frustration.

A very ordinary morning. Aizen took a sip of his tea, focusing on the paper's headlines. In his peripheral vision the door to his bedroom suddenly swung open, entirely on its own.

He spared it an odd look. He'd been in this apartment for months now, and although it was small and cramped even with how few belongings he'd brought with him, it was quite sound. He'd never had any trouble with faulty hinges or loose latches. The very blandness of that morning made him go over and give it a cursory inspection. He twisted the handle, swung the door experimentally back and forth and then let it still. A long stare gave it ample opportunity to prove it had absolutely no inclination to move on its own, and Aizen gave an indifferent shrug and closed it over again.

It was nothing.

He returned to the table, draining the tea from his cup as he began to collect his files neatly and efficiently, securing them into his briefcase. He was just pulling on his coat, scarf hanging loosely around his neck when the door suddenly swung open again. Slowly. Deliberately. If he listened, he though he could hear the hiss of the handle turning in its place before settling back into slackness.

It made him pause, but he was quick to shake off the ridiculous thought. Nothing had turned. The latch was just loose. Later on this evening maybe he'd find a screwdriver and tighten things up so it wouldn't slip again. He strode back over, grabbed the handle...and stopped. Unforgivably, he gave in to the faint prickle of unease and looked into the bedroom. It was empty, of course. There was no one here except himself.

And if he didn't get moving, he was going to be late. He left the door half-open, turning back to collect his things, his mind already planning ahead to the material he needed to cover today, the papers he still had to grade, the staff meeting planned for this afternoon. He slipped easily back into the comfort of his routine, all interrupting strangeness forgotten as he locked up his apartment and descended the stairs at a quick pace to ensure he wouldn't miss the train.

In the empty apartment, the bedroom door wavered thoughtfully before obligingly closing itself over, an unheard, skittering rhythm drumming itself against its wooden surface.

  


* * *

  


Aizen enjoyed his work. The act of teaching came easily to him, almost nostalgically familiar, and the depths of his knowledge in his chosen fields – literature and history – sometimes surprised even himself. He couldn't always recall having read some of the books he often brought up as examples in his classes, but surely he must have. He remembered them intimately; edition numbers, page references, quotations. 

His students, by and large, adored him. His fellow staff respected him, save those few who gave him strange looks; who knew his records and what they lacked, or those who had asked one of those vital, deceptively difficult questions.

_What university did you go to? What town did you grow up in? What is your family like?_

All questions Aizen Sousuke couldn't answer. His psychiatrist had told him to just be patient. The information would come back to him eventually. In the meantime, there was no reason not to go on living his life, doing things he enjoyed, being a useful member of society in spite of his handicap.

An interesting handicap it was. Aizen knew quite a startling number of things about a whole range of esoteric topics – depths of knowledge he'd barely plumbed, not even knowing where to start inside his own scattered mind – but knew absolutely nothing useful about his own history except what had been recorded over the last couple of years during his institutionalisation and subsequent release. Two years on, he was almost convinced that dark point in his life was well and truly done with. His existence was quiet, stable...uninspiringly modest, perhaps, but after dreams of insufferable grandeur he felt this was much safer than trying to reach for anything more. He was content, he told himself, and was mostly convinced this was true.

In the evening hours, he preferred to keep to himself. He might have easily formed friendships amongst the staff, allowed himself to indulge in the expected normality of going out for dinner and drinks, but he was a little too aware of his own inability to connect. It was something he was still working on, seeing people as themselves, not as easily manipulatable constructs. Seeing them as his equals, not as beneath him. He wasn't quite free of that lingering mindset even though now he could recognise it as something cognitively unsound. He didn't trust himself with others even though they themselves might have given him that trust.

Instead he spent the evenings alone, practising calligraphy on the table. His inks and brushes were splayed out neatly, square sheets of rice paper awaiting the strokes that would redefine them, give them new life. 

His students had always been delighted by his work, eager to learn...but no, that wasn't right. Aizen shook his head, memory reasserting itself. He had never taught this at the school. Sometimes past and present were easily confused, overlapping in a way that gave him impossible, false memories. He banished the image of demonstrating to a classroom of bright, eager faces how to properly hold a brush. Just his imagination. It was easier to tell, these days, what was real and what was not.

Or so he thought, but as he lofted his brush over the page, ink threatening to spill, he hesitated and reached (not for the first time) to the back of his neck where the faintest prickle of sensation was disrupting his concentration. He almost dismissed it (again) as nothing of consequence – an itch, a tingle – before he gave it a slightly longer moment of thought, trying to identify what it was, and found himself freezing at the absurdity of his answer. 

It was a soft, regular caress of warm air, like breathing. A persistent exhalation on the back of his neck. One, two, three...he set his arms back on the table, brush forgotten, but the sensation didn't disappear. Didn't change. Didn't alter in any way that might have allowed him to think it was anything else.

_Impossible_ , he thought and, absurdly, remembered that unprompted yawn of a door sweeping open on its own. He was just imagining it...or there must be a breeze coming from somewhere. A gaping window (they were all rusted shut) or a stray gust from under the door (the air was unbearably still everywhere except right _there_ , on the nape of his neck). 

Seconds ticked past. Maybe he'd have been less uneasy if he could hear something, but there was no sound at all to accompany that quiet caress of breath. Nothing. There was no one. He shouldn't look. It was just his imagination-

He couldn't stand it. He turned around with abrupt suddenness, brush cleaving the air, held before him as if it were a sword, painting an invisible, warding gesture.

(He would not think of swords, or wards or seals. He had moved past that madness, he _had_.)

The space behind him was empty, of course. The exhalation was gone. The stillness broke only when an errant drop of ink fell from the tip of the brush onto the floor, seeping into the grain of the wood. An irretrievable stain, like blood

(He won't think of that either.)

_It's nothing_ , he told himself again, not sure why his heart was beating so fast. Not sure why he felt something that might almost be akin to disappointment, but he resolutely dismissed it from mind. He was tired, that was all. There would be no more calligraphy tonight. He cleaned his brushes and tidied the rice paper away, not even sparing a thought for the now closed bedroom door. He'd sleep it off, and maybe give his psychiatrist a call in the morning. He'd come too far to suffer a relapse now.

Aizen Sousuke was a sensible man. He didn't believe in ghosts or spirits or monsters. Not any more.

  


* * *

  


Breakfast. Tea. Paper. His very comfortable morning routine. Aizen frowned absently at news of a small gas explosion that had taken out a nearby store front. He prided himself on not needing to read anything deeper into the accident, taking a final mouthful of rice and before heading to the shower. In his head he was already planning the rest of his day. There was a student he needed to speak to regarding a late assignment, and another who had asked for some private assistance, a familiar, intense gleam in her eye. Her need for help was sincere enough, and Aizen was sure he'd have no trouble guiding her youthful infatuation into a more productive desire to raise her grade. He could assure himself there was nothing nefarious about that. It was something she could only benefit from. 

He rinsed the final suds from his hair and stepped out of the shower, binding the towel around his waist with mechanical thoughtlessness. In absent inattention, his eyes almost glazed over the mirror, his reflection an indistinct haze on its fogged surface except for a few unusual swirls of clarity that he belatedly recognised as distinct shapes.

_Hello_ , the mirror said, the words scrawled into the condensation with undeniable certainty.

Aizen felt a twist of something foreign beneath his breastbone...the place where sometimes he imagined he could feel a lump, although inspections and x-rays had told him there was nothing. Calling it fear was too galling. If this is the beginning of another resurgence of insanity, Aizen was only resigned to it, not afraid. 

But he would not give in just yet.

It took only one easy swipe of his hand, and the word was gone, erased from sight and then from mind. Aizen collected his clothes and went to dress in the bedroom where he wouldn't have to look at that final downward stroke that had escaped the obliteration of his palm.

  


* * *

  


The day was unexpectedly exhausting, and Aizen should have realised that morning's sign for what it was. The twist in his chest had been all too familiar, but perhaps he'd let himself sink a little too deeply into denial with the scouring of that word from his mirror. It had been over a year since his last fit. He didn't want to believe he'd have to suffer another, but as the final bell tolled and his eager student showed up for her private lesson he was forced to gently turn her away.

“I'm sorry,” he said, offering her a weak smile that won her heart and sympathy without even trying. “I'm not feeling well, today. Come see me next week and we'll reschedule.”

He made a brief call to administration, letting them know they'd need to find a substitute for his classes tomorrow. The receptionist knew him well enough not to need to ask questions. This wasn't the first time he'd needed to abstain from his classes, and the explanations from his doctor were already on file.

It began on the train ride back to his apartment. The jerky rattling of the carriage did him no favours as his chest started to tighten and tension wound tightly between his eyes; the beginning of a migraine. Aizen concentrated on keeping his breathing steady and his face expressionless. No need to make a scene. He'd be fine so long as he got home, although the journey was a brutal one. He was almost staggering by the time he got back to his apartment, blindly forcing the lock and barely remembering to turn it behind him. Bag, briefcase and coat were all shed as quickly as he could bear. Even for this, he forced himself to put each where they belonged before he finally dragged himself to the bedroom and hunted through the drawers for the bottle of pills he'd been given.

More than a year, he thought, swallowing the tablet down dry. Why now?

Perhaps it wasn't completely coincidental that he was also starting to have _problems_ again. Just small ones, he assured himself. Nothing like the full-blown hallucinations that had kept him locked in a fantastical world of death gods and monstrous spirits. A few paranoid twitches really weren't too concerning.

Yet.

He really should give his psychiatrist a call, though. He'd meant to have done it this morning before he'd allowed the mirror to distract him. He should do it now, except that his head was really starting to pound, and the only recourse would be to lie down and try to sleep until the fit passed.

Although he supposed they couldn't really be called fits any more. Back in the beginning – the little he could remember of those early days when he hadn't entirely broken free of his delusions – he'd suffered much worse. Dangerous fevers, frothing convulsions, intense spikes of agony that had made his scream his throat bloody. He'd claimed all kinds of things, then. That they (a nameless, faceless they, of course) were trying to kill him. That they had put him in this frail, crippled body to take his power from him. That he didn't belong, that he needed to get out, and so he had torn madly at his own skin until the doctors were forced to restrain him so he wouldn't hurt himself or anyone else.

Dark times, indeed.

There was nothing physiologically wrong with him; nothing that the doctors could find. No strange orbs embedded in his skin, eating him from the inside out. Nothing strange or unnatural about his body – in fact he was in quite good condition for his apparent age. If not for the persistent return of these episodes, he'd have been perfectly healthy.

He sank down on the bed, hands over his eyes, not quite smothering the quiet groan that escaped him. He felt hot. The fever was back then too...but he knew from experience his temperature would fluctuate wildly, and he'd save himself some grief if he could manage to crawl under the covers for when the chills came. Tried as he might, though, the thought of moving was too much. His breathing was laboured enough, shallow and hoarse, trying to fit air into lungs that suddenly felt too small, like the spaces where his organs should be were filling up with something else.

(With bitter hatred for a man whose name he refused to even _think_ ; instead his memory caught on the image of dishevelled shade of blond hair and eyes almost hidden in the shadow of a hat.)

He cleared his mind of everything, letting the pill do its work to coax him into unconsciousness until the worst of it passed.

  


* * *

  


His dreams were violent, but indistinct. He might have called them nightmares if he'd ever confess to having such things, or if he'd remembered them better, but when he finally woke he couldn't call up more than vague feelings of pained discontent that might just have easily been attributed to the migraine. It was fading now, finally, along with the sick shivers resonating in his chest. He sighed, pulling the blanket more tightly around him, allowing himself another few precious moments of rest before responsibility goaded him into waking.

As such, it took him several minutes to figure out why the presence of the blanket, why the _texture_ of it, felt wrong. When he finally deigned to open his eyes, he realised the blanket wasn't he one that resided normally on his bed. That one he was still lying on, much as he'd fallen onto it when the headache had overcome him. The covering on top of him was the spare he kept in the cupboard for when the nights became too cold. 

How it had gotten from there to here...he must have moved it himself, he thought muzzily, trying to figure out when he might have done that, and why. Confused by the migraine and the medication, most likely. He must have gotten up at some point and forgotten all about it. How long had it been this time, anyway? Aizen rolled over, squinting at the clock on the bedside table, and confronted a second impossibility. 

There was a cup of tea sitting on the night stand, freshly made and still steaming. Aizen stared at it, and then at the bedroom door. It was open again.

“Hello?” he called, his voice rusty and uncertain, and he chided himself for it a moment later because even though he could feel a faint sense of disturbance – these gestures that seemed more likely to have been the work of someone other than himself – that couldn't be right. He'd _never_ had anyone else in this apartment. Not friend, co-worker or student. He valued his privacy. Few people knew where to find him, nor would they have any reason (or right) to let themselves in.

_Hello_ , the mirror had said. _I'm here._

Except that had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination, and so this could only be the same. Aizen took a careful sip of the tea. It was brewed exactly the way he liked it. All the more reason to believe he'd done it himself.

(Or that it had been done by someone who knew him very well.)

He stood up, his motions so abrupt he almost overbalanced. His head was still swimming from the after-effect of the migraine, feeling heavy and slow, but he couldn't help himself. He had to be sure.

His apartment was so small, there was really no place for anyone to hide in it. Aizen stumbled towards the front door to check it, but it was still locked and showed no signs of forcing. His tiny kitchen was absent of any disturbance except for the tea pot sitting innocently on the end of the counter. He touched a hand to its side, and the ceramic almost burned him. It couldn't be more than _minutes_ old.

He was almost afraid to check the bathroom, but steeled himself only to find it completely empty. There was nothing on the mirror's surface but the residual smudge of his own hand. He took a moment to wash his face in the sink, staring hard at his reflection. There were no obvious demons staring back at him. No insanity in his eyes. No, what he saw there was something more pained than even the migraine could force out of him. The twist to his lips was a self-flagellating sneer at his own paranoia. Maybe he should have checked the expiry date on those pills. It _had_ been a year, after all. 

He tiredly returned to the bedroom, finding the pill bottle on top of the dresser and scouring its label before flinching violently as his eyes took in the details of the room. He'd missed it initially because there was nothing out of place, but that was the problem. _There was nothing out of place_. The bed had been neatly remade, the extra blanket now folded up neatly across the foot of the mattress.

The pill bottle fell from his numb fingers as he stared, trying to figure out what the hell was going on...besides the obvious. He was losing his mind. Again.

“Stop it,” he murmured, catching himself on the door frame, hoping in vain that the sound of his own voice would steady him. It didn't. It only made him feel more alone, more absurd. Didn't they say that talking to yourself was the first sign of madness? If so, he seemed to have jumped ahead a few steps, and was only belatedly catching up.

Memory lapses, he assured himself. From the migraine, caused by stress. Easily explained. Normal. He was fine, he-

He could hear something. Too soft to be a whisper, barely louder than his own heartbeat. He held his own breath, trying to decipher it, but there was nothing he could make out. It was a strange contradiction of a sound; somehow seeming impossibly far away, and at the same time unbearably close. He tilted his head, and the noise seemed to originate from right next to his own ear. He felt the brush of air; another silent exhalation.

Jerking abruptly out of his trance, he shook himself off. He really needed to get out of this apartment. There was no hope for him if he stopped to listen to the voices in his head. That was the fastest route to insanity. 

Aizen didn't bother to change his clothes. He only grabbed his coat, shoved his wallet in his pocket, and as an afterthought, grabbed his briefcase on the way out the door. He had papers to grade. The chore would keep him busy and focused enough to help him ignore the fear that his mind was starting to fall apart again. If he could keep it at bay with sheer force of will, he _would_.


	2. Over the Edge

Aizen had put three blocks between himself and his apartment, and found a nice little café that wasn't too crowded. A booth by the window gave him a warm ray of afternoon sunlight to bask in as he spread his assignments out across the table, and the quiet murmur of other patrons was a comforting background noise as he began marking essays on the Sengoku Era. He ordered coffee (not tea; not now) and it went cold beside him as he diligently corrected haphazard sentence structures and sloppy arguments with as much generous patience as he could manage.

It was all so ordinary, so mundane. It should have been a comfort. He told himself it was.

At the very least, it did help him calm down enough to dismiss all notions of supernatural strangeness in his apartment. Everything, he decided stoutly, had either been the work of himself, or simply his imagination. Ignoring the problem wasn't helping either. He couldn't afford to put that phone call off any longer. He'd finally been weaned off the need for regular medication, but perhaps it was time to resign himself to the idea that he might have to rely on it once more. The last thing he needed was for reality to completely slip away from him yet again.

He'd make the call when he got home. The doctor's office stayed open late. For now, given that his afternoon had passed without a single mishap, he supposed it was safe enough to return to his classes tomorrow. Trouble only seemed to start when he was by himself, without anything to anchor him or keep him in check. He only had to survive the nights alone. Had there been anyone to ask, he might have given into the temptation to have someone keep an eye on him, but there was no one he could trust for such a chore. 

Even after he graded his last paper, he requested a fresh cup of coffee, and spent another hour simply watching people pass by his window as the sky began to turn dark. Avoiding the inevitable. He inwardly berated himself, but even that wasn't quite enough to motivate him to move until the street lamps outside started to light and he couldn't justify the procrastination any longer. He collected his briefcase and pulled his coat more tightly around him before stepping out into the cold.

The sky held the kind of ominous tension that often preceded rain, and Aizen supposed it would be a justifiable punishment if he got caught out in it without an umbrella. He signed, turning up the collar of his coat, and very deliberately did not look towards the man half-hidden in the shadows on the opposite side of the street whose gaze seemed to be following Aizen's progress intently.

One of the reasons Aizen valued his privacy so highly, why he found it so difficult to lower his guard around others, was that he often couldn't shake that feeling of being watched. It didn't matter where he went, he could always feel the pressure of judgemental gazes, as if someone were just waiting for him to snap. He knew, intellectually, that the feeling was just one of his symptoms that had never quite faded away. That when people glanced towards him, sometimes it was purely innocent even if their eyes seemed to dart away suspiciously when he happened to look back at them. He never let himself react, but inwardly he couldn't stand it.

Which was why, instead of following the crowded, well-lit street back to his apartment, he decided to take the slightly less direct but much less populated alternative by cutting through the park. At least then he'd be able to keep a better watch on his surroundings, and keep unfriendly eyes at a distance.

How horribly quickly he was slipping. Normally he'd force himself to take the other route just to show he had mastered his psychosis, but not today.

Strange how the prospect of unknown watchers put him on edge, but the possibility of a mugging did not. Not that his neighbourhood was particularly unsafe, but even if it had been, more ordinary sort of dangers didn't bother him. In fact, in the first few months after his initial release, he'd sometimes found himself toying with the possibilities of stepping out blindly into traffic, or taking that one fatal step off the edge of a high building. Not so surprising, perhaps, given how obsessed his subconscious had been with death and what came after it, but something in him had held him back. Had demanded that he wait.

For what, he wasn't sure.

He'd thought that he'd been vigilant enough about watching his surroundings, but at some point during those dark thoughts he must have lapsed. He didn't even see what hit him, only felt the heavy impact of what might have been another body shoving him hard to the ground, moving at such speed Aizen didn't even get a good look as they passed. Had he been paying more attention, he might have marvelled at the way he rolled against the force of the blow, coming up readily on his knees smoothly, but in that moment he was far more concerned with the grappling yank that had torn the briefcase from his hands.

He'd just been robbed.

“Hey!” he called out, already rising, glancing around, but of course the park was empty of anyone who might have stood in the thief's way. They'd chosen their moment well. Aizen muttered a soft curse under his breath before tearing after them. There wasn't anything of much value in the case, but he owed it to his students to at least make an attempt to rescue their work.

The thief had run right off the path, pushing through the surrounding bushes, moving so quickly Aizen didn't see anything except the sway of foliage where they'd passed. He normally had a good eye and memory for details, but as he shielded his face from the backlash of branches and pushed in after them, he couldn't call up a single detail about his attacker. Not their height, build, gender or clothing. If he'd stopped to consider that, he might have marked its strangeness.

He lost sight of them so quickly that he'd have been left completely directionless if he hadn't spotted the pale sheaf of fluttering paper discarded in a browning pile of leaves. Aizen picked it up, recognising his own scrawled annotations on the essay. The thief must have opened the case whilst running, looking to see what valuables they might have come away with and discarding the rest. He spotted another scattered fan of papers just ahead and went to collect those too.

There was little hope in catching the thief, but at least if he was lucky he'd be able to retrieve all the dropped essays before wind carried them away or rain ruined them. Aizen followed the trail, sourly shaking grit and foliage off the papers, trying not to leave too many smears. He wondered how many of them he might still lose, but much to his surprise, when he emerged on the other side of the hedges he found both his briefcase and what looked to be the rest of his files strewn about on the grass in one messy, discarded pile. The thief must have decided there was nothing worth taking. Interesting that they hadn't at least kept the case itself for whatever meagre value it might be pawned for, but maybe they hadn't thought it worth the trouble.

He glanced around, but the thief was obviously long gone. There was nothing in this lonely corner of the park except an empty playground in a wide pit of sand and a single, dim lamp illuminating a battered rubbish bin. Aizen allowed himself a short sigh, mixed relief and exasperation, and began gathering up the papers. At least he'd have an interesting story for when he finally handed them back to his students. He righted his case, throwing the first batch of essays in, and then paused, instincts suddenly prickling.

The feeling of being watched was all the more incomprehensible now. Aizen lifted his head, body still and almost shaking with sudden tension, his eyes drawn to the dark fold of a shadow beyond the abandoned slide. That's all it was. A shadow. 

(A shadow cast by nothing, standing incomprehensibly on its own, darker than all the others.)

It's nothing, he assured himself, and that phrase had become almost ludicrously familiar now, meaning less with each repetition. He should hurry up, collect all his papers, get back to the main path, but he couldn't convince his body to obey. Not when doing so would draw its attention.

(Its?)

Then the shadow moved.

It was such an impossible, incomprehensible thing, like that word scrawled into the surface of his mirror. Something the mind tried to immediately reject even when instincts refused to be ignored. They could never be rationalised out of the belief that monstrous things could still crawl out of the dark, to hunt, to kill.

You're imagining it, Aizen tried to convince himself, the voice small and weak inside his mind, nearly drowned out by the thud of his heart. You're having another episode. You need to go home and make that phone call. Just stand up and go.

But he couldn't stand. He could barely breathe. The air felt suffocatingly heavy, like gravity was suddenly bearing down with malicious intent.

(You need to run. You know exactly what that is, and what it will do to you.

...But why? After all, he didn't have-)

As he watched, frozen, he saw the sand of the playground suddenly shift, hissing in protest around the base of the shadow as it slowly lurched forward. A small cloud of dust puffed up from what must have been the enormity of its weight, leaving a large, splayed footprint full of sharp points. As insubstantial as the thing looked, Aizen suddenly couldn't believe that it wasn't actually there, and wasn't fully capable of hurting him. 

He forced himself off the ground, briefcase forgotten, but his legs were strengthless and even if he'd been able to manage more than a few staggering steps, he wasn't fast enough. The shadow was far larger than he would have thought, one enormous limb unfolding, and while Aizen saw it sweeping towards him he couldn't dodge. He only barely raised his arm in time, trying to protect his head, but it was a paltry gesture. The impact tore through him, his clothing no protection at all, and he felt sudden agonising pain bloom with brutal heat down his shoulder and back as something sharp ripped into him. He was thrown across the grass, and this time there was no graceful recovery to save him from the breath-stealing force of that impact.

He was too stunned to move, even though he knew he should get up, run, or at least see how badly he was wounded. He could feel the hot-cold stickiness of blood seeping out of him, but he was utterly disoriented by the blow. The best he could do was blink rapidly, trying to clear his vision, chest heaving in an attempt to recapture the air that had been forced out of his lungs.

(How _weak_ he'd become. How mortal.)

With his body on the ground, he could feel it tremble as the shadow took another heavy step. He could almost see it, on the edge of his vision. A darkness blacker than the sky above it, two burning points of light that might have been eyes, boring into him. It loomed closer, and then suddenly glanced to one side, distracted. Aizen thought he could hear a raw, grating echo. A snarl of rage that his ears could barely register.

And then voices.

_Over there! Check him!_

People? Aizen tried to lift his head, then thought better of it. It made the world spin unsettlingly, and his senses felt muddled and confused. He tried to get his eyes to focus, but they weren't cooperating very well. He thought there was someone leaning over him, but he couldn't make out they features clearly, and for some reason he could still see the stars and the sickle curve of the moon right through them. He blinked, but the effect didn't change. He thought he could see their mouth moving, but there must have been something wrong with his hearing too, because he could barely make out the words.

_He's still alive!_

_Good._ The second voice was even more quiet, coming from further away, with a high, feminine lilt. _Can you imagine how much trouble we'd be in if that thing managed to eat him?_

_Where the hell did it come from?_ the man – his voice was deep and masculine – leaning over Aizen muttered. _I thought they had a barrier up to keep this area clear._

_Who knows_ , his companion answered. _Hurry up and help me kill it._

They vanished...or Aizen might have lost consciousness briefly, because in the next moment they were gone and he could only dimly make out the sounds of a scuffle and the muted roar of the inhuman creature. The clouds above him were moving to blot out those few pinpricks of light, the night growing darker as he bled out on the grass. Moving with methodological carefulness, he managed to sit up, letting out a harsh gasp as he felt something tearing anew. When he put his hand to his shoulder, it came away drenched and dark with blood. 

His first and only stroke of good luck for the evening: his mobile phone was in his pocket, still intact. He clumsily dragged it out, fumbling it open with slippery fingers, praying to get enough signal to hail an ambulance.

_Finally. I thought we'd never get rid of them._

Aizen froze. That voice had come from right beside him, cheerfully conversational and painfully familiar. He turned his head, catching the pale outline of a face not far from his own.

_I suppose they must be bored with babysitting you, thought_ , the voice carried on blithely. _A little Hollow like that isn't going to give them much excitement, but we only need a few minutes, don't we, Aizen-sama?_

The figure wasn't solid. Behind them, Aizen could see the frame of the empty swingset, distorted but visible. He could just make out the thin curve of a smile that only stretched wider the longer Aizen stared.

_Oh? Can you see me now? That's good._

One pale arm reached for him, and heedless of his wounds, Aizen jerked backwards, away from it. The Cheshire smirk twisted in amusement, releasing the huff of a sigh. 

_How terribly far we've fallen._ The ghost beside him stood, stretched, unfolding a long, lanky frame draped in a long coat of white, hair a translucent shade of silver. _Shall we go, Aizen-sama?_

Aizen looked up at that phantasmal shape, a trick of moonlight-

(Except there was no moon, now. The clouds had blotted it out.)

-and then back down at the phone in his hands which was tangible, solid, _real_. He forced his fingers to dial the number, trying to remember the boundaries he'd forcibly relearned; the difference between reality and dream.

_No, no, none of that._ The phone was plucked from his hands, slipping easily from his bloody fingers to be tossed carelessly aside. _After all the trouble I went to, getting you all to myself, let's not invite company._

A ghostly hand passed over his eyes, almost but not quite touching. _Go to sleep, Aizen-sama. Just let me take care of things._

His eyelids grew heavy, and maybe it was for the best he couldn't resist the spell that lulled him gently into unconsciousness. Maybe when he awoke, it would be to a world without monsters or ghosts or writing on mirrors.


End file.
